Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Why Pleo Went Extinct

After yesterday’s news that Pleo may get resurrectedto some extent, it might be worth having a look back at just whathappened to Ugobe. As shockingly entertaining as it might have been,Pleos weren’t systematically destroyed by Combots…Rather, it was a more banal combination of factors. Ugobe’s chieftechnology officer, John Sosoka, gave a lecture at Stanford a few weeksago entitled “The Rise and Fall of a Companion Robot: Lessons Learned from Pleo.” You can watch it in its entirety here.

The talk is 40 minutes long followed by questions, but here’s thenutshell… Firstly, the economic collapse was obviously the mainproblem. Pleo is a luxury item, and an expensive one at that. Butthat’s the other part of it: nobody, Ugobe included, was really surewhat they had with Pleo. It was kind of a toy, kind of a pet, and kindof a robot. Any way they tried to spin it, it was hard to market,especially for the amount that it cost.

Speaking of, Pleo is still available on Amazon, and the price has dropped to about $150.That’s only $10 more than Pleo actually costs to manufacture (thewholesale price was $195), according to Sosoka, so it’s a pretty gooddeal.